Women's World Blitz – Gunina wins with a 2804 performance

6/6/2012 – It was almost Fischer-like: European champion Valentina Gunina ravaged the opposition and finished with an unprecedented 13.0/15, a full 2½ points ahead of her nearest rivals (Natalia Zhukova and Anna Muzychuk). Gunina, the only IM in the top group of five GMs, did not lose a single game. We bring you results, a video report and closing ceremony pictures in our final report.

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Valentina Gunina wins Women’s World Blitz Championship

Women’s World Rapid Championship 2012 was held in Batumi, Georgia from
31 of May till 3rd of June 2012. The event was organized and conducted by the
ACP and the Georgian Chess Federation and approved by FIDE. The total prize
fund for the rapid championship is US $59,000. The organizers also provided
the special conditions for the players with the Elo of 2500+ and nominees from
all national federations. As a result 50 players from 18 chess federations took
part in the tournament including five former world champions, the current European
champion and such many strong GMs. The Blitz World Championship was a 15-round
Swiss played at a rate of 4 min + 2 second.

The reigning European champion in classical chess and blitz, Valentina Gunina,
started the first day with a perfect 8.0/8 score. On the second day she seemed
to be slowing down, drawing her first four games and narrowing her lead from
two to one point. But then this amazing new star on the women's chess firmament
went on to win her final three games and ended 2½ points ahead of her
nearest rivals (Natalia Zhukova and Anna Muzychuk). Her performance was a stirling
2804, which means that we could only expect the final result against the opposition
she faced from a player rated that high. Her current FIDE rating is 274 points
lower than that.

Second was GM Natalia Zhukova, Ukraine, fourth Alexandra Kosteniuk, Russia.
In
the background is the Chief arbiter, former women's world champion Nana Alexandria.

GM
Robert Fontaine and his video producer Gérard Demuydt have castled from
the World Championship in Moscow to the Women's Rapid and Blitz in Batumi. They
are producing video reports and interviews after each round for the French chess
magazine Europe Echecs. We are grateful
to receive these reports and that they include interviews with players and personalities.

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!

"Simple yet aggressive!" Enjoy this new exciting DVD by Simon Williams. Let the famouns Grandmaster from England show you how to gain a very exciting yet well founded opening game with the London System (1.d4 d5 2.Bf4).